Death Lands a Cargo E-Book

Arthur Leo Zagat

• Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: Dime Mystery Magazine
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 47

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Death Lands a Cargo by Arthur Leo Zagat is a chilling and fast-paced thriller that plunges readers into a world of treachery on the high seas. When a mysterious cargo ship docks in the harbor, its arrival brings with it a deadly secret. The crew is missing, and the only clues left behind are cryptic messages and a trail of blood. As authorities scramble to unravel the mystery, they uncover a sinister plot that threatens not just the ship, but the entire city. With time running out, can the investigators stop the impending catastrophe, or will the cargo deliver death to all who come near? Experience the tension and suspense in this gripping tale of maritime mystery.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Death Lands a Cargo

Death Lands a Cargo

I. — MARK OF THE DEVIL'S HOOF

II. — THE HELL SHIP LANDS

III. — DEATH IS BETTER

IV. — ON DEAD MAN'S ARM

V. — GRISLY CARGO

Landmarks

Table of Contents

Cover

Death Lands a Cargo

Dime Mystery Magazine

By: Arthur Leo Zagat

Edited by: Rafat Allam

Copyright © 2024 by Al-Mashreq Bookstore

First published in Dime Mystery Magazine, October 1935

No part of this publication may be reproduced whole or in part in any form without the prior written permission of the author

Death Lands a Cargo

While the Negro crone muttered, Ruth Adair trembled with the horror of what had happened in her terror-haunted home. Why, then, did she rush, nude and helpless, toward that spot where the phantom ship had landed its grisly crew?

I. — MARK OF THE DEVIL'S HOOF

THEY had taken away the rude wooden trestles on which the coffin had lain, and the room to which tragedy had called back Ruth Adair was just the same as it had been two years ago when she had left it—except for the heavy, cloying scent of funeral flowers mingling with the salt tang of the sea.

"Jim!" The girl's speech was muted, tight with a queer dread. "Why didn't they let me look at my father before they took him away?"

The driftwood fire within the deep embrasure of the stone-smudged fireplace was shot through with darts of green and scarlet. Shadows overhung the two—dark shadows brooding between the adze-hewn, time-blackened rafters of the low ceiling. Against the firelight Jim Horne's stalwart figure was a tall silhouette, somehow ungainly in the suit of Sunday best he had worn to Cap'n Eli's obsequies. His wind-reddened, broad-planed features were expressionless, masklike.

"You were late." The words boomed from his deep chest. "If we had been any longer, the dark would have caught us out on Dead Man's Arm."

"But it was my father, Jim. My father! I had a right to say good-bye to him."

The man's big fists knotted at his sides. "You had a right to stay here with your father and your old mother and not go off to New York, draining them of their little savings while you studied singing." There was almost savage rebuke in his tone, and bitterness. "If you had stayed here—"

"Jim!" Her sharp cry cut him short. "My life is none of your affair. I told you that—"

"—two years ago, yes. You have not changed." A tiny muscle pulsed in his cheek. "Then I have no business here." He turned abruptly away, was across to the door in three stiff-legged strides. But he twisted around just as he reached it, and there was tortured urgency in his voice. "I came back to say one thing, and I will say it. You must go back. You must go back to the city tonight. You must not stay here."

An old anger flared within the girl. "I must not! Who are you to tell me when to come or go? When I take orders from any man it will not be a slow-minded fisherman, a great hulking clod good for nothing but to heave a net and pull an oar."

Jim's eyes blazed, then suddenly were bleak. "All right," he mumbled thickly. "It'll be your fault..." He pulled the door open—was gone.

Ruth stared at the drab, fitfully lighted oak, and the dull ache beating in her brain was not all because of her loss. Behind her the fire crackled, and slow feet thudded.

"Some tea mak' yoh feel better, Miss Ruth." The corpulent negress coming in from the kitchen had a cup and saucer in her lumpish, black hands. She set them down on the slab-topped chartroom table at which Cap'n Eli would never sit again, conning his maps and sailing in fancy remembered voyages. "Yoh ain't had a mite t'eat sence yoh come home."

"No, Lidy," the girl said drearily. "No, thank you. It would choke me."

"Then stir it. Please, Miss Ruth, stir it for me."

"You're still at that foolishness, Lidy? I..."

"Please." There was an odd insistence in the way her old nurse said it. Ruth shrugged. She was too tired to argue, too dreadfully tired. She swirled a spoon in the streaming liquid, laid it down. The black woman leaned heavily on the table, peering at the circling of leaves on the tea's surface, and she seemed cloaked with an eerie shadow, blacker than the mourning garments in which she was clothed. For a long moment there was no sound save for the dully booming advance of the sea that the ancient walls could not keep out, the surge of the sea coming up close to the house and the swishing hiss of its retreat.

Ruth's finely chiseled nostrils flared a bit, and her chin quivered. "Lidy." Anguish edged the girl's tones, though her eyes were dry. "What was the matter with everyone at the funeral? Why didn't they talk to me or to mother? Why did they run away right after father was—was buried, as though they were afraid of something?"